The Iraqi government said today that it would revoke the license of the private security firm BlackwaterUSA, due to the reckless actions of its employees. Blackwater is is best known for supplying the contractors who were killed in Fallujah — an event which sparked a major siege of the city costing thousands of lives. Lesser known, of course, is their construction of private military bases in California and Illinois for training, and their deployment to New Orleans shortly after Katrina. The problem with the Iraqi government announcement is that Blackwater does not currently have a license to operate in Iraq to revoke. According PSCAI, Blackwater started the certification process, but hasn’t completed it. Blackwater operates in Iraq under contracts provided by the State Department and CIA, and it can be guaranteed that neither one of those organization is going to take its queues from the government of Iraq. So what’s all the hubbub about then? The news may suggest that the Iraqi government is getting tired of the wild west antics of private security contractors, or it may suggest that the Iraqi government is trying to show they are not the obedient puppies of American corporate interests. Nonetheless, very little, if anything will change with the Iraqi government’s announcement. If nothing else it is simply a diversion to suggest a more just reality where none really exists; for — you would imagine — in a just world a government would be able to expel a private foreign army from its soil. But not in Iraq.
